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Mrs Bodycote, who used to work as an administration manager in the NHS, said alarm bells started to ring.

She said: “I said they should do the operation and I would pay later.

“The supposed doctor said that I was wasting time and effectively putting my husband’s health at risk.

“He said he had large open wounds that could get infected.”

Mrs Bodycote, from Countesthorpe in Leicestershire, went into the kitchen to get an iPad to search for a number for Bramcote Hospital in Nuneaton, where the "doctor" said her husband was being treated, when the mobile phone of her younger daughter, nine-year-old Lois, rang.

Bramcote Hospital in Nuneaton

Mrs Bodycote said: “It was her daddy. I grabbed the phone off her and asked if he was in hospital after having been in an accident.

“He told me he was fine and nothing had happened.

“I went back into my office and called the man a liar and slammed the phone down.”

The call had come through at 10.30am on Monday, February 26, and the very next day Mr Bodycote received a call telling him his wife had been involved in a car crash and he needed to pay for her treatment.

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“I rang the police and fraud squad officers told me quite a lot of people had received these calls and some people had paid out.

“I just to warn everyone out there about this horrible scam which has left me feeling really upset and angry.”

A spokeswoman from Action Fraud said that Mrs Bodycote's call was being assessed by the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

An Action Fraud spokeswoman said: "This type of scam, known as ‘number spoofing’, works by fraudsters cloning the telephone number of the organisation or person they want to impersonate and then making it appear on the victim’s caller ID display when they telephone them.